Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(38)

“You got all that from his voice?”

“It’s what I felt. He asked mechanic questions. He knew what he should about us. He was worried in case Mark had woken us up. He was apologetic.”

“Total worst case?” Shorty asked, like a ritual between them.

“Would be he was one of those smooth-talking busy guys who pay no attention at all until an appointment actually rolls around. Deep down I think he was apologizing for not figuring it out yesterday.”

“That sounds real,” Shorty said.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Patty said. “He promised four hours maximum.”

—

After another mile the woods stopped and the vista opened out to a patchwork of horse fields and cow fields. Reacher walked on, conscious of the distance, thinking about a boy on a bike. It felt like a long way. But maybe it wasn’t. Times had changed. In the past a five-mile walk or a twenty-mile cycle ride would have been considered routine. For a boy with a hobby, eight miles was nothing. Or nine, to be exact, to the downtown streets. Which was where he had been seen, late one September evening in 1943. Doing what? The birdwatcher lady made no mention of binoculars around his neck. Reacher felt she would have noticed. He was there for some other purpose. Which theoretically could have been many and various, for a sixteen-year-old. Except that 1943 was a serious year. The war was nearly two years old. Everything was rationed or in short supply. Everyone was dour and worried and working long hours. Hard to imagine any kind of giddy excitement going on good enough to attract a sixteen-year-old nine miles to the center of a stiff little New Hampshire town on a fall evening during tough times.

No mention of a bicycle, either. Maybe he had parked it. Maybe he was walking back to get it. With his friend. Maybe his friend’s bike was parked too. Then they met the big kid.

Reacher walked on. Coming up ahead on his left he saw his general target area. He scoped it out, from the middle distance to the far horizon. Ryantown was in there somewhere. Possibly. He checked the map. The road he wanted was a shallow left turn about a mile ahead. Some distance short of it was shown a thinner spur. Same basic direction, but shorter and narrower. Not much more than a farm track. Which might or might not be useful. Best case, it would lead to a stern old farmhouse, ideally in continuous occupation by the same family for two centuries or more, ideally with a very old farmer sitting in a wheelback chair by the stove in the kitchen, with a rug on his knees, ready to talk for hours about his long-ago neighbors a mile to the north.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst, was Reacher’s motto.

He walked on, and he took the turn into the narrow track. Very quickly he saw it didn’t lead to a stern old farmhouse. What it led to was a pleasant split level, about as old as he was. Therefore built long after Ryantown was already gone. Therefore no good. No old geezer sitting there with his memories. Unless the house was a replacement. Which was possible. Plenty of houses were. Maybe they had torn down the stern old structure. Maybe it was no longer livable, in the modern era. Or maybe it had burned down. Maybe the wiring was bad. Possibly original, with silk insulation. But they all got out in time and they built a new house, which meant the very old farmer with the rug on his knees was no longer in a wheelback chair in the kitchen, but in a vinyl recliner in the family room. But it would be the same guy. With the same stories. Still willing to talk.

Hope for the best.

He walked on. The house was harmoniously designed and lovingly maintained, even pampered, like it got painted a year early every time. It had sensible plants around the foundation, neatly trimmed. It had a car port, shading a clean domestic pick-up truck from the pale midmorning sun. It had a white picket fence, running all the way around, enclosing a neat quarter acre, like a suburban garden.

Behind the fence was a pack of dogs.

There were six of them. Not barking yet. All mutts, all scruffy. Nothing huge, nothing tiny. Maybe a hundred different breeds, all mixed together. They came close and stood inside the picket gate. He was going to have to wade through them. He wasn’t scared of dogs. He believed a measure of mutual trust solved most problems. He didn’t plan to bite them. Why assume they planned to bite him?

He opened the gate. The dogs sniffed around him. They followed him down the path. He found the front door and pressed the bell. He stepped back and waited in the sun. The dogs pooled around his knees. A long minute later the front door opened and a man appeared behind the screen. He was a lean person, with a sensible expression on his face, and buzzed gray hair on his head. He was wearing blue jeans from a farm store, and a plain gray T-shirt. He was old enough to get a discount at the movies, but a long way from needing a cane. He too had a pool of dogs around his knees. Six more. Maybe the previous generation. Some had fur frosted gray.

Reacher watched the guy test out a bunch of alternative greetings in his mind, as if trying to find one to match his particular circumstances, in which a random pedestrian had shown up silently and magically on his doorstep in the middle of nowhere. But evidently failing to find one, because in the end all he said was, “Yes?”

Reacher said, “Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was passing by, and I have a question about some real estate north of here, and I wondered if you might be in a position to fill in the gaps in my information.”

The guy said, “Are you a salesman?”

“No sir, I am not.”

“Insurance?”